Allison Cameron
“''No. I expect you to do what you always do. Make a joke, go on. I expect you to be just fine''.” Cameron when House asks what she expects him to do after resigning Allison Cameron was a member of Gregory House's diagnostic team during the first three seasons in the position of a fellow in Diagnostic Medicine. She was qualified as a specialist in immunology. Cameron was portrayed by actress Jennifer Morrison. She was the youngest member of House's original diagnostic team and the only female member. After Cameron left House's diagnostic team she returned in the season four premiere as the senior emergency room attending physician at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital . At the end of Season 5, she married Robert Chase. However, in Season 6 Cameron leaves both PPTH and Chase. She guest-starred for the last time in the Season 6 episode Lockdown where she returns to ask Chase to sign the divorce papers and finally settles the outstanding issues in their relationship Character History Early Life Very little is known about Cameron's early life, but it is implied that unlike Foreman and Chase, her adolescence was rather uneventful. She was born in about 1981 in the area of Chicago, Illinois. Both of her parents are still living, and there has also been a reference to an older brother in the episode Fetal Position. However, the details of her family life are not known. She did admit that she was arrested at the age of 17 for an undisclosed reason. It is not known where Cameron attended university, but it is known that shortly after finishing university, she married Cameron’s first husband who she knew has been recently diagnosed with terminal thyroid cancer. The husband died within six months of the marriage, but Cameron did take the precaution of freezing some of his semen. We also do not know where she attended medical school (although Johns Hopkins Medical School was ruled out in Pilot). However, she did finish near the top of her class. She did her internship at the Mayo Clinic, a substantial accomplishment. She then completed a residency in immunology, but it has never been revealed where she did her residency. Before the series Cameron was hired about one year before the start of the series, after Chase had been hired, but well before Eric Foreman. Apparently, House had many more better qualified applicants but was intrigued by Cameron because of her exceptional good looks. He wondered why someone so good looking had worked so hard to become a doctor and an accomplished one at that. He figured that she must be damaged in some way and wanted to find out more about her, as well as having the bonus of admiring her looks. Season One By the time Foreman is hired, Cameron is well aware of House’s “quirks”, such as never wanting to meet patients. However, she becomes suspicious when she realizes Foreman is a lot more qualified than she is. She confronts House who admits his real reason for hiring her, as well as at first misunderstanding that House’s interest was just sexual. However, soon Cameron becomes romantically interested in House. House has no romantic interest in Cameron and puts her attraction down to a general need to find people who need fixing. Nevertheless, Cameron persists. When Cameron quits to try to take the heat off of House after Edward Vogler threatens to discontinue the entire department, House finds himself refusing to hire a new candidate and wanting her back once Vogler is gone. Cameron refuses until House agrees to go on a date with her (they had earlier attended a monster truck show together when James Wilson backed out on House’s plans, but she wanted a “real date”). House agrees, is a total gentleman during dinner, but tells Cameron that she’s only interested in him because he’s flawed. Cameron falsely concludes that House isn’t capable of love until Stacy Warner comes back into House’s life and it’s clear that he is in love with her. Cameron accepts that House doesn’t love her and stops pursuing him. However, she doesn’t stop loving him. Season Two Despite being tempted by both a job and a relationship with the handsome and famous Sebastian Charles, Cameron decides to stay with House. She gets more insight into House’s character when he meets his parents and they are nothing like what anyone thought they would be. House admits to her that his parents are lovely people who loved him unconditionally, but his father’s honesty, specifically his tendency to “tell it like it is”, was bad for an adolescent who needed encouragement. In Hunting, Cameron decides to experiment with a patient’s Ecstacy and when Chase drops by her apartment he finds her high and insistent. They share a brief, intense sexual encounter which Chase enjoys but Cameron regrets. The same patient exposes Cameron to AIDS, but she later tests negative. Cameron prepares an article about Andie, who was literally given a living autopsy as a diagnostic procedure. Leaving it with House for review, she is aghast when Foreman publishes an article on the same case by merely having House sign off on it without reading it. When Cameron asks for an apology, Foreman reminds her they are colleagues, not friends, and says he has nothing to apologize for. However, when Foreman takes ill, he admits to Cameron that the reason he doesn’t like her that much is her lack of objectivity about the cases. However, he realizes Cameron’s compassion for people makes her the perfect medical proxy and he appoints her just before going into an induced coma. He also apologizes for stealing the article, but although Cameron says he’s just doing it because he thinks he’s dying, she agrees to accept it just as he goes under. She proceeds with a risky brain biopsy which discovers the problem but nearly results in Foreman losing control of his muscles before he recovers. Season Three After House seemingly doesn’t solve a case after recovering from gunshot wounds, Cameron inadvertently discovers that House was actually right about the patient, who recovered fully. She learns Lisa Cuddy and James Wilson have plotted to keep this information away from House for fear he will take further risks, but instead House is now doubting his abilities. Based on Cameron’s threats to tell House, Cuddy eventually does it herself. Cameron grows a little more when a famous scientist refuses diagnostic tests. She finds out that he too performed experiments on unwitting subjects in the 1960s. When he tries to justify his actions by the results obtained, Cameron angrily takes a skin biopsy. When it turns out the patient has a terminal illness that will keep him in pain until he dies, Cameron is the one who arranges for the fatal dose of morphine. More insights are gained into Cameron’s personality when a morbidly obese man comes in with a coma. Cameron seems to be the only one genuinely interested in treating him, and when the patient tries to leave she actually drugs him to keep him from leaving. As a result, she damages both the MRI machine and a plate glass panel, as well as standing up to Cuddy over the results. House figures Cameron must have been close to someone who was overweight at one time. On Valentine’s Day, Cameron suddenly suggests to Chase that they have a “friends with benefits” relationship. They carry on a series of dangerous liaisons, including in a patient‘s bedroom and the sleep lab. Eventually, while making out in the storeroom, House breaks in, ostensibly to dispose of some files. However, they both wonder if he did it deliberately. The affair soon becomes common knowledge in the hospital. However, when Chase makes it clear that he wants a relationship with Cameron, she breaks off the relationship they do have and their working relationship chills. Chase reacts by starting I love you Tuesdays to remind her that he likes her. Cameron keeps brushing him off. However, after Foreman announces he is leaving, House’s behavior starts to drive the team away. After House fires Chase and Foreman makes it clear that he’s leaving too, Cameron decides to resign. She meets Chase at a bar to commiserate, but turns down his offer of a drink. However, later that evening, she shows up at Chase’s apartment and she tells him that she wants to hear that he likes her again. Season Four Cameron starts the year by bleaching her brown hair blonde. Cuddy decides to hire back Cameron and has her fill the opening in the emergency room for senior attending physician. She manages to be in the hospital for over two weeks before House notices she’s there. He describes her new position as “two steps back”. Chase too decides to stay in order to maintain his relationship with Cameron and Cuddy finds him a place on the hospital’s surgical staff. Cameron starts to become more dismissive and authoritative with House, insisting he take cases and dismissing his attempts to treat her ER patients. However, she can’t forget her days in diagnostic medicine and, although she assures House that she doesn’t miss him, she starts getting her hand in by helping out some of The Applicants. When Foreman is left in charge while House is out treating a secret CIA patient, she advises two of the applicants to treat the patient without Foreman’s permission. Foreman soon gets back at her by pretending to discharge one of her ER patients behind her back. She soon apologizes to Foreman. She soon settles on Jeffrey Cole as her favorite and advises him to stand up to House. To try to make it stick, she bets House that Cole will stand up to his constant abuse. She wins $100 when Cole flat out punches House in the face after a particularly egregious insult. Cameron starts to get worried about her feelings for House when she’s interviewed by a documentary crew and when asks if she left House’s team because she hated him blurts out “No, I love Dr. House”. She then starts practicing in a mirror what to say to “clarify” her feelings while Chase looks on, more bemused than annoyed. Cameron tries to help out by joining the hospital’s budget committee, but she soon becomes a liability when House turns on her for cutting off free cable. She resigns from the committee in order to frustrate him. When the hospital accreditation inspector comes for an unannounced visit, Cameron is assigned to keep an eye on House’s team on the pretext that she has to come back to sort out House’s charts. However he still can’t tempt her back to the team, although she admits she misses the work. Season Five Cameron continues to grow in confidence and when one of her homebound outreach patients becomes ill, she once again manipulates House into taking the case. She and House parry over the patient’s treatment, and when House tries to pull some fast ones to get the patient into the hospital for treatment, Cameron always remains one step ahead of him. When Cuddy adopts her new daughter, she desperately wants to spend more time with her and turns to Cameron for help. She makes Cameron House’s new boss. Once again, House finds himself less than adept at manipulating his old fellow, getting Cameron to “approve” risky procedures he has no intention of performing. However, when Cameron breaks down and agrees to a very risky procedure (and even assists), she realizes she’s not up to the job even though the procedure indirectly leads to the right diagnosis. She tells Cuddy she can’t say no to House and that no-one else will be able to say anything other than no to House. Cuddy is stuck with supervising House herself and turns on him with a vengeance. Meanwhile, her relationship with Chase is getting both more serious and more difficult. Chase realizes that Cameron spends most of her time at his place but won’t let him have any space at hers. However, after the relationship nearly ends, Cameron relents and lets Chase have his own drawer. Things get more serious when Cameron inadvertently learns that Chase is planning to propose. She pretend she has to work with House on a case of a sick environmentalist and can’t go away for the romantic weekend they had planned. Chase figures that Cameron still has feelings for House and breaks off the relationship. However, Cameron finally breaks down and admits to Chase that she only dodged the weekend because she knew about the proposal and didn’t know how she would respond. Although he’s freshly scrubbed for surgery, Chase proposes on the spot and Cameron accepts. However, there is still one more hurdle to cross. Cameron discloses the fact that she has kept her late husband’s semen to Chase and that she’s not sure she wants to dispose of it. Chase rightly sees it as another hallmark that Cameron is not yet sure that he’s going to stay with her. However, in the end, he realizes that Cameron is merely keeping it as a link to her late husband and agrees to let her keep it. They marry in the last episode of the season. Season Six With House stating his intention not to return to diagnostic medicine, Foreman is put in charge but Chris Taub decides to quit the team and Foreman fires his girlfriend Thirteen. Foreman asks Chase and Cameron to work with him until he can interview replacements. However, when they work on the case of a brutal African dictator, Chase fakes a test result that makes it look like Cameron’s diagnosis is right, and with Cameron on his side, they convince Foreman to change the treatment plan. However, the treatment is a disaster and the dictator soon dies. Chase confesses to Foreman but keeps the truth from Cameron. House figures out the truth independently. However, Chase’s behavior soon changes and Cameron becomes suspicious and believes Chase is having an affair. Chase finally confesses his misdeeds and Cameron forgives him. However, House, who is now back in charge of diagnostics, asks Chase why Cameron went so easy on him when she would be morally outraged with anyone else. House is soon plotting to get all his old fellows back to work for him. He convinces Chase, Thirteen and Taub to beg for their old jobs back, but Cameron soon realizes that House had known what was wrong with the patient all along and threatened a risky course of treatment to get the others to get interested in the case. She tells House that she’s through with him and his arrogance has also convinced Chase he can play god too. She leaves the hospital and tells Chase she’s leaving him as well. However, when Chase is slow with the divorce paperwork, she comes back to PPTH to get him to sign it. He won’t until they discuss their breakup. They are soon trapped alone in a room together when the hospital is locked down looking for a missing newborn. Cameron tells Chase she never loved him and Chase accepts that - he sees it as vindicating his actions in the relationship as not being the cause of their breakup. However, she later recants, saying she did love him, but that it still wasn’t his fault that they broke up. She admits she’s the one who has trouble forming and keeping relationships with men. Chase consoles her and they wind up making love one last time before Cameron leaves with the completed divorce papers. Relationship with House Main article Hameron When questioned initially, House told Cameron that he hired her for her looks. However, he expanded on that by admitting that he surmised that because she was so good looking, she could have coasted into any sort of life and instead must have chosen to dedicate her life to medicine. Cameron expressed a romantic interest in House on several occasions, and they dated once (the one date was Cameron's condition for coming back to work). House has been apparently uninterested in pursuing a relationship - he told Cameron she tends to form relationships with people who need "fixing", and that it is his damaged personality that in fact draws her to him. House, however, betrays more than a passing interest in Cameron to Wilson in the episode Role Model when he reacts perceptibly to Wilson's comment about 'hitting on' Cameron. Although Cameron has stated that she is "over" House, neither her colleagues (nor Wilson or Cuddy) believe her. Both characters retain an ambiguous interest in the other. In No Reason, House repeatedly fantasizes about Cameron, first for her abiding concern for his injury and later as he caresses her with a surgical robot. For her part Cameron lets slip to a documentary team in Ugly that she loves House and later we see her trying to convince herself that it was an innocent remark. After Chase is fired and Foreman leaves in Human Error, Cameron hands her resignation to House, ostensibly because she has learned all she can from him. Since leaving House's team, Cameron has been far more authoritative with House, bringing him cases and pointing out how his quick diagnoses have been wrong. However, it appears she may be getting more authority over House, primarily due to her excellent administrative skills, honed by years of doing House's dictation and keeping up his charts. Cameron and Chase In Hunting, Chase drops by just after Cameron experiments with the patient's Ecstacy and she aggressively throws him on the bed. It soon becomes obvious to her co-workers what happened and although Chase seems to be willing to continue, she seems to regret the whole incident. However, by the next season, Cameron's lack of a social life leads her to suggest a "friends with benefits" arrangement with Chase, which he agrees to. They engage in dangerous sex in the sleep lab and a patient's bedroom. When Foreman becomes suspicious, Cameron "confesses" and Foreman figures that Cameron is jerking him around and drops the matter. Chase is deeply hurt that Foreman wouldn’t even consider that Cameron wasn’t joking about it. However, House "accidentally" drops in on them while they are hot and heavy in a hospital storage closet. With the cat out of the bag, Cuddy warns Cameron that if she gets hurt, one of them will have to be fired. However, when Chase expresses an interest in having a real relationship, it's Cameron who backs off and breaks up with Chase. However, Chase is not to be denied. For the rest of the third season, he creates I love you Tuesdays where he reminds Cameron each and every Tuesday how much he likes her. Cameron still isn't interested and blames Chase for breaking up their previous relationship by breaking the rule about not getting serious. However, when Chase is fired and Cameron resigns, Chase tells Cameron that although he still feels for her, the whole "Tuesdays" thing was a silly idea. He figures it's over when she turns down his request for a drink, but she's soon at his place. In order to stay together, Cameron returns to Princeton-Plainsboro as senior attending physician in the emergency room, and Chase takes a job on the surgical staff. However, they go through a rough patch when it becomes clear that Cameron has issues allowing Chase a permanent place in her life. She finally relents to letting him have his own space in her apartment. It gets worse when Chase tries to take Cameron away for the weekend in order to propose. When Cameron learns what's up, she does everything she can to delay the trip because she's not sure she's ready to commit. Chase decides he's had enough, but Cameron reveals she knew he was about to propose and was just scared. Chase proposes to her at the hospital and she accepts. However, that's not the end of it. Cameron reveals that she has kept a semen sample from her late husband. Chase believes her wanting to keep the sample shows that she's afraid the marriage won't work out. On the verge of canceling the wedding, Chase points out that Cameron won't change her mind about the sample even if they have a perfect marriage with lots of kids. At that point, she agrees that Chase is right and agrees to destroy the sample. However, Chase soon relents when he realizes that Cameron only wants to keep the sample because it gives her an attachment to her late husband. They marry at the end of the fifth season. In the episode The Tyrant, Cuddy reinstates Cameron and Chase as fellows in the department of diagnostic medicine. Their patient is an African dictator named Dibala, who plans on wiping out half his country. When Dibala began suffering from short term memory loss, Cameron informed Dibala's Colonel that his condition would render him unfit to continue his reign as President. Upon hearing this, Dibala challenged Cameron to take his life for herself, which subsequently angered Chase. Following this, he manipulated the results of a blood test by using another patient's blood. This cover-up resulted in Foreman's misdiagnosis and subsequent treatment proving fatal for Dibala. Cameron suspects that Chases suspicious behavior is because he is having an affair, but she finds out about what her husband has done in the episode Known Unknowns, in which he and Cameron both decide they should get out of Princeton as soon as they can. They plan to quit the hospital together and go somewhere else where they can focus on their relationship and on each other. House begins talking to the two of them about their resignation and suggests that Cameron forgiving Chase for his misdeeds with the dictator is out of character for her. Soon, Chase has an inexplicable change of heart and decides not to leave Princeton-Plainsboro after all. Cameron is disgruntled by his decision and proceeds with her initial plan to leave, albeit alone. Cameron returns in the Season 6 episode, Lockdown, where she and Chase decide to talk about their marriage. The two break into a heated arguement regarding the events that happened prior to their separation. Cameron also brings with her divorce papers in which Chase agrees to sign it after the two apologize to each other for taking off too quickly without giving a proper farewell. They cease arguing afterwards and decide to enjoy a final moment together, revisiting all of their best times they had during their marriage. It is unsure if she will make another appearance in future episodes after this event. Personality Cameron could justifiably be described as sweet, trusting, and compassionate. Although these would appear to help make her an excellent doctor, House delights in pointing out how each one is a weakness to her ability to objectively deal with a patient. This criticism is not without merit. For example: *When an infant died in Maternity, House sent Cameron to tell the patient's mother. When she protested, House told Wilson to follow her and make sure that she did her job. However, when confronting the parents, Cameron froze up and Wilson did the job for her. *Cameron felt sorry for a woman who had cancer but no living family. As such, she failed to tell the patient she might have a terminal illness until she had ruled out every other possibility. She even refused to do the tests which would definitively prove it was cancer. Even Wilson admonished her for this. *When a woman needed a liver transplant from her lesbian partner, Cameron wanted to tell the partner that the patient was planning on leaving her. House had to take extraordinary measures to keep her from doing so. In the end, she found out the patient knew all along that her partner wanted to leave her, and gave her the liver transplant to make her feel more guilty about leaving. *In Skin Deep, when Cameron finds out the patient has had sex with her father, she (properly) reports it to social services despite House's vehement objections. To her astonishment, the patient denies it. When she tells the patient she must report it, the patient says it was all her idea and she makes a habit of sleeping with men who can help her career. She slept with her father so he wouldn't interfere with her career or life. Despite her usually sweet personality, Cameron is shown to harshly judge those who do not meet her moral standards. For example, she tells a patient's husband he is a terrible person after he confides that a small part of him hopes his wife doesn't wake up, which would mean she didn't cheat on him. She can also be somewhat callous, such as when she tells Chase that "If only he was handicapped, all the good times he could have had with his dad." in third season episode Lines in the Sand. Not only that, but she began a "friends with benefits" relationship with Chase, only to callously break it off with him when he admitted that he'd fallen for her and that he wanted a serious relationship. de:Allison Cameron Cameron, Allison Category:Doctors Category:Main Characters Category:Females Category:Featured articles